Metro New York newspaper sold to Schneps Media, owner of amNewYork
Free daily newspaper Metro New York is being sold to Schneps Media, according to sources — making it the second freebie paper to be sold in two months.
The sale, which is also expected to include Metro Philadelphia, is slated to be finalized by the end of the week — stirring worries among the already small staff that layoffs could soon follow.
Schneps Media,a family-owned business that launched with the Queens Courier in 1985, took over the Empire State’s only other free daily, amNew York, from Newsday in October.
At that time, the entire staff of amNew York was laid off by Newsday, and a handful of people were then rehired by Schneps to continue to publish the five-day-a-week paper that is handed out mainly at subway stations and rail terminals.
The pending deal has also raised questions about whether Schneps will find enough ad support to continue to publish two free papers in the Big Apple in a challenging market. If not, one of the papers would have to close.
Schneps Media is a family-owned weekly newspaper company founded by Chairwoman Victoria Schneps Yunis. Her son Joshua is also active in running the business, which also owns the Gay City News, Downtown Express, The Villager, the Park Slope Courier and the Brooklyn Paper.
Neither Victoria nor Joshua returned requests for comment.
The rise of the freebies took hold in the early aughts when it was widely believed that a quick-to-read free paper would better capture the attention of younger urban readers then subscription papers. But the rise of cell phone coverage underground has thwarted those plans by allowing consumers to get their news via mobile phones instead.
Also hurting readership, the MTA has worked to limit the hawkers who stood around handing out the papers every morning, replacing them at many stations with racks only.
The New York Times in 2005 paid $16.5 million for a 49-percent stake in the Boston Metro paper, which it them sold as part of a $70 million sale of the Boston Globe and other media publications to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry in 2013.
It’s unclear whether Boston Metro will be included in the sale to Schneps. Boston has been the weakest of the three Metro papers in terms of ad support and its fate would seem most at risk in a deal, sources said.